Meaning & readings
cow
On’yomi ギュウ
Kun’yomi うし
Nanori うじ、ご
Origin
This kanji is a simple picture of a cow's head and horns. The two horizontal lines at the top represent the cow's horns spreading outward, while the vertical line and curved strokes below show the head and face. Over time, the picture became more stylized and simplified into the four strokes we see today, but it still preserves that basic idea of a horned animal. The character's meaning directly comes from what it looks like.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (牛).
Common words
- 牛舎 ぎゅうしゃ cow shed; cattle barn
- 牛肉 ぎゅうにく beef
- 牛乳 ぎゅうにゅう (cow's) milk
- 水牛 すいぎゅう water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis); domestic Asian water buffalo
- 和牛 わぎゅう Wagyu (any of four breeds of Japanese cattle); Wagyu beef
- 子牛 こうし calf
- 牛歩 ぎゅうほ snail's pace; slow progress
- 牛丼 ぎゅうどん gyudon; rice covered with sliced beef, usu. with fried onion
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 93
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1202 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+0725B